Juno News - Charter is being ＂violated and abused＂ by COVID policies： former Newfoundland premier

00:00:00.000 you're tuned in to the Andrew Lawton Show

00:00:05.280 let's go back to the basics here I want to talk to someone who was there at the very beginning

00:00:11.340 well he was the premier of Newfoundland and Labrador when the Charter of Rights and Freedoms

00:00:15.920 was being drafted the last surviving of the premiers involved in that very significant

00:00:20.900 process in Canadian history that is former Newfoundland premier Brian Peckford who joins

00:00:26.440 me now Brian it's wonderful to talk to you thanks very much for your time today

00:00:29.780 thank you for having me I'm I'm more than pleased to help clarify the whole business about the Charter

00:00:35.940 Rights and Freedoms this is something that again we're coming up on the the 40th anniversary of

00:00:41.680 and I think we'll have to have you back around then to talk about the legacy of the Charter but

00:00:46.300 the one fundamental thing that people have viewed in the Charter all throughout its history is that

00:00:53.060 it's there to protect the rights of Canadians and we have in that freedom of expression mobility

00:00:58.860 all of these things have been under an increasing threat from government in the last year and a half

00:01:03.720 and when you see the Charter that you left behind as part of your political legacy and you see what's

00:01:08.720 been happening how do you reconcile those two visions yes I can't reconcile those two visions and I'm sure

00:01:15.300 that if any of the other first ministers were still alive they would voice the same kind of shock and

00:01:21.800 surprise as I do to see how callously the governments not individuals or organizations or somebody who's

00:01:30.400 trying to undermine our society or some anarchist somewhere but the actual governments whose predecessors

00:01:40.880 participated in forming and creating this Charter Rights and Freedoms in the Constitution Act of 1982

00:01:49.580 so I am absolutely shocked and have been writing about it extensively for the last couple of years

00:01:56.480 highlighting the fact that what the governments are doing violates you know at least four different

00:02:03.040 sections of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms section 2 section 6 section 7 and section 15 all of which

00:02:10.780 deal with freedoms and rights equality rights freedom of assembly freedom of association freedom of expression

00:02:18.260 freedom to move around the country freedom to have a job right it's a right to have a job your rights

00:02:26.700 are supposed to be protected and yet jobs are being taken away from people so and governments are

00:02:33.580 doing this willy-nilly the parliaments are not involved anymore this is the other part of the equation

00:02:38.280 that a lot of people are forgetting I thought this was a parliamentary democracy parliamentary democracy

00:02:43.920 means by its very definition you go through the parliament for all these things so it seems to me

00:02:49.980 that the parliament of Canada and the parliaments of all of the other jurisdictions by the way there are 14

00:02:54.940 parliaments in Canada when you include the territories the three territories 10 provinces in the federal

00:03:00.480 government these should be open and these should be debating the provisions that the government

00:03:07.720 is suggesting should be brought in to mitigate the virus called the COVID-19 and there should be a full

00:03:15.480 and healthy debate by the representatives of the people so not only is the Charter of Rights being

00:03:21.600 violated but the whole custom convention and parliamentary democracy principles are being

00:03:29.000 much like violated and abused in what is now happening and what has been happening for the last

00:03:35.700 almost two years now there's a tremendous backlog in the courts of challenges of everything ranging

00:03:42.380 from individual fines that people have received under lockdown measures to very large programs like

00:03:48.500 hotel quarantine vaccine mandates all of this but but in the cases that have been litigated courts have

00:03:54.720 generally speaking taking a taking a very wide interpretation of the very first section of the Charter

00:04:00.460 which is very familiar certainly to you and and to a lot of Canadians by now that says that all of the

00:04:05.080 other rights you have can be limited by government and I knew that and by the courts and I know that

00:04:10.460 you wrote a letter to premiers about this and you you basically said you know section one is not

00:04:15.600 protecting you as much as you think it is section one says that the federal government or the provinces

00:04:22.280 have to demonstrably justify what they are doing within reasonable limits in a free and democratic society

00:04:32.040 by law they have not demonstrably justified what they are doing and therefore in my view

00:04:40.340 everybody else is being silent on this everybody else is being I haven't heard any law societies I haven't

00:04:47.040 heard any any law professors or political science people everybody's going silent there's a sort of a

00:04:52.040 collective psychosis or amnesia in the country where nobody wants to speak up on this they have not

00:04:58.040 demonstrably justified I mean I can read the words I don't have to be a constitutional lawyer I was

00:05:04.200 involved in the constitution making and so I have a fair amount of experience in that over like almost

00:05:10.760 two years when we were negotiating the constitution act so I do have some experience I do have some

00:05:16.440 knowledge of words and what does put in a constitution and I've been studying this ever since it was created

00:05:22.520 back in 1981 so I feel I have some authority on this and and therefore I know what demonstrably justify

00:05:31.400 means you have to justify demonstrably in other words you have to be quite open and transparent and

00:05:39.080 you have to make you have to have great evidence and what the governments have not done is that they have

00:05:44.840 not allowed through the parliaments or through any hearings competing views on the medical science that is

00:05:51.800 driving these lockdowns and these mandates and so on and the mere fact that they haven't that means

00:05:57.000 they have not demonstrably justified the positions they are taking so in my view if this ever gets

00:06:02.600 a spring court of camera if there's any independence left at all in the judiciary and that's where it would

00:06:07.560 reside right now I submit then it seems to me they would have to rule a lot of these measures to be

00:06:14.120 unconstitutional now they may put in place other measures or say you can do a and you can do b but you

00:06:20.360 can't do c and d or we'll put a time frame on this or you give me more evidence before I make a final

00:06:27.080 decision right they could do all of those things but they and the other thing I've said to the

00:06:33.720 premiers in a in a in a open letter is there is a measure to expedite this through the courts nobody's

00:06:40.920 talking about this either and that is provincial or federal reference every government of canada

00:06:47.880 provinces and the federal government can take their measures and refer directly to their highest court

00:06:55.480 in the case of the provinces it's their appeal court in the case of the federal government it's

00:07:00.360 the supreme court of canada and they could ask those courts is what we are doing following the

00:07:05.640 constitution of this country is it following the charter rights and freedoms not one has done it

00:07:10.520 i've submitted an open letter to all premiers asking them why won't you refer what you're doing

00:07:16.840 to your courts to get a decision so that the people of canada know you're being constitutional

00:07:22.040 not one premier has answered me not one premier has answered me and i find that shocking that not even

00:07:28.840 the courtesy to respond to somebody who was involved in the constitution in the beginning especially the

00:07:33.720 charter rights and freedoms so there are measures available a lot of people are frustrated but if

00:07:39.480 the if a province of canada did what i'm saying and referred this to their appeal court do you think

00:07:44.840 the appeal court would sit on that not on your life they would know right away as a signal by these

00:07:50.760 governments they want to know you know whether we're constitutional they would take that up immediately

00:07:55.720 make an adjudication then that province could refer directly to the supreme court of canada

00:08:00.120 they can go directly to the supreme court of canada so those two courts could within six months just

00:08:05.720 say give it an outside of a year make a decision not the three or four years that we're into now

00:08:11.880 with them going through the courts by organizations and individuals and so on because in the regular

00:08:18.680 course of business it has to go to the trial division of the supreme court of a province then to the

00:08:26.040 appeal division of the supreme court of the province then to the supreme court of canada so that can be

00:08:32.520 shortened immeasurably especially if a government initiated it because then the courts would be

00:08:37.720 seized with knowing they need a quick decision i don't disagree with you but i think the two issues

00:08:43.480 there are firstly that a lot of provinces know that what they're doing is is not constitutional and

00:08:48.760 they don't want to put it through that scrutiny but also i i have a not a lot of optimism that the

00:08:54.920 courts are going to be on the right side of this and to go back to section one for a moment we've

00:08:59.720 seen in a number of of constitutional uh charter litigation cases and you know even more recently

00:09:05.720 on some of the the covid lockdown related litigation that that again courts are taking government at its

00:09:12.600 word that covid is kind of a trump card that you can use to suspend civil liberties they're not worried

00:09:18.200 about the inherent constraints of section one so the general question i guess i'll put to you brian

00:09:24.680 is when that was being drafted and when that was being considered was there a little bit more

00:09:30.520 optimism about how the judiciary would use that power no question nobody nobody and i would say

00:09:38.040 those people who are still alive who were deputy ministers advisors to the various governments

00:09:42.600 there's quite a few of them still alive should be coming out and saying what i'm saying i don't think

00:09:46.600 there was anybody in that room at the time or in the various rooms of the various delegations who

00:09:51.800 thought that this would happen at this point in time even even in the public uh emergency so-called

00:09:59.240 so-called section one was never meant to be a trump card for what we're seeing now

00:10:03.960 well but it's a protection because it's demands to be justified and they haven't done that they're

00:10:08.280 using that but it cannot be that's not a valid use of that section so they're still violating the

00:10:14.360 constitution so that's how i would that's how i interpret it yes they might try to use it as a

00:10:19.640 trump card but it's a false trump card it's a false trump card because where is the justification

00:10:25.720 demonstrably made nowhere all they've done is gone ahead with their provisions with no justification

00:10:32.360 in those provisions what they did and by the way in alberta there's a court case by the center of

00:10:37.320 constitutional freedoms and they've been trying to get the evidence from the alberta government and the

00:10:41.560 alberta government has been refraining from providing the evidence the evidence by the way that

00:10:46.120 they were supposed to have for the decisions they made a year and a half ago so to say they don't

00:10:51.880 have it or it's going to take us time to prepare it is absolutely specious and doesn't pass muster

00:10:58.360 so that's a good example of one government that's very afraid to come forward with the evidence evidence

00:11:04.680 has not been presented to justify what the governments are doing and they have that obligation under

00:11:10.280 section one to do so you've been a premier you understand the political implications of your

00:11:17.400 actions and you also understand of course working within the bureaucracy and having some forces in

00:11:22.440 government and in deputy ministers that want to push and pull you every which way but a lot of these

00:11:27.640 premiers you know it seems like they're listening to the public health experts that they cite and and a

00:11:33.720 lot of them are only interested in lockdowns they're not interested in exploring the economic

00:11:38.680 implications the civil liberties implications and all of these other things and and i guess i i'm just

00:11:43.720 curious why you think a lot of these premiers have narrowed their focus so much to only really pull

00:11:50.040 advice from one source and one source only as they're drafting these measures i find it very disturbing

00:11:57.800 obviously uh one of the answers is is very poor leadership in this country right now obviously leaders

00:12:04.280 are to take advice but after taking advice then they're to go away and make up their own mind

00:12:08.920 both the cabinet and the ministers and the premier or prime minister that doesn't look like it's

00:12:13.960 happening now but it's it's blatant andrew i mean there's a great barington declaration how long has

00:12:18.760 that been out there and they tried to malign the three greatest experts in the world who signed that

00:12:24.680 barington declaration saying that these lockdowns are not going to work and you know some of tens of

00:12:30.520 thousands of doctors and and research scientists around the world that's been completely ignored so it's not

00:12:37.960 only on the you know narrow scale but on the broader scale they're not even taking that into

00:12:42.920 consideration so once again i come back to number one is the lack of leadership there's no question

00:12:48.200 about it that most of the leaders of this country today have failed the test of leadership have

00:12:53.240 failed the test of their premiership have failed the test of their prime ministership and it comes down

00:12:58.360 now unfortunately to civil society comes down to you and me and others and thank you for giving me this

00:13:04.200 opportunity to articulate an alternative view not to be against vaccines generally speaking but be

00:13:13.640 against one that has not proven its worth in any testing because it's still experimental and is

00:13:20.120 damaging tens of killing tens of thousands of people according to the government records themselves

00:13:25.720 both in the united states and europe and and therefore we should be far more cautious and we should be

00:13:31.000 taking a broader view of of the guidance and ex and expertise that we're supposed to do as good

00:13:37.880 leaders and we're not doing that and so i think that there's a failure of leadership number one but

00:13:42.360 there's also failure by civic society by civil society by our business leaders by our union leaders by our

00:13:49.400 academic leaders uh to to come forward and the other problem with that is our democracy has been

00:13:55.880 failing for quite some time this is a catalyst that sort of our manifests it's more open so more people

00:14:02.680 see it okay it's been failing for a long while especially since pierre elliot trudeau senior when

00:14:08.200 he started to develop a bigger prime minister's office the power has been moving from the mps the power has

00:14:14.120 been moving from the parliament parliament parliament went first of all to the cabinet with the prime minister

00:14:19.480 now it's gone all the way to the prime minister and there's a book out that people should read

00:14:24.280 by donald savoy entitled democracy in canada the disintegration of our institutions and he tracks

00:14:33.560 he tracks this this evolution of the diminution of power from the parliament to the prime minister's

00:14:41.560 office over time and so we have been gradually losing our democracy and this so-called pandemic this

00:14:47.960 virus has manifested all of the scars that we allowed to happen over the last three or four decades

00:14:56.920 sadly and so there's a real leadership vacuum not only at the political level but at the academic

00:15:02.440 business and unionally level in other words our civic society is broken and we need to fix it soon

00:15:08.600 in order to get back the democracy that we're losing now every day

00:15:12.200 just as we close here and you look back as i mentioned on almost 40 years of the charter of

00:15:19.480 rights and freedoms and still a country that has devolved into the things you and i have been

00:15:23.800 chatting about for uh the time we've been we've been discussing things do you feel that the charter

00:15:29.240 is still the tool it was intended to be or do you feel looking back like there was something missing from

00:15:35.320 it no i don't think there's anything missing from it all of the elements are there remember we had

00:15:40.520 the bill of rights before the charter john diefenbaker introduced the rights so we still do technically

00:15:46.520 well it is as a federal law but the whole idea of the charter was to put it in the constitution so it

00:15:51.400 would be further away from being being able to be changed that was the whole idea we already had a

00:15:58.280 charter all the ideas that are in the charter were in the bill of rights that mr diefenbaker passed but

00:16:03.480 it was a federal act of parliament and therefore was subject to change by any majority government

00:16:07.560 that came in could be changed very easily but by putting it in the constitution we all thought

00:16:13.000 everybody thought that therefore it's very difficult to change now and therefore we have

00:16:18.120 our rights and freedoms protected only to find out today that we don't

00:16:24.200 well on that grim note i i guess it shows that as you mentioned we have to in civil society be

00:16:28.920 the ones to stand up for our freedoms first and foremost former newfoundland premier

00:16:33.320 brian peckford thank you so much sir for joining me it's a pleasure to speak with you

00:16:37.320 andrew it's a pleasure to speak to you thank you very much

00:16:40.680 thanks for listening to the andrew lawton show

00:16:42.840 support the program by donating to true north at www.tnc.news

Juno News - October 20, 2021

Charter is being ＂violated and abused＂ by COVID policies： former Newfoundland premier

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